Yesterday's publicity, about a mainframe software glitch at the big-four financial institution on Monday, was totally out of proportion to the problem, says Standard Bank CIO J"org Fischer.
He says a glitch created "a lock-out and affected a couple of our channels at 3.20pm on Monday". Fischer says this knocked the bank's branch transaction system offline, affecting Internet banking and credit card clearances.
But he said the branches closed at 3.30pm anyway and a stand-in procedure meant credit card transactions were still being cleared. A note was posted on the bank's Web site to alert clients that the bank was experiencing a technical problem.
"All of this was resolved by 4.30pm; so just over an hour later all services were recovered," Fischer says. "Obviously some came up earlier. Our ATMs were fully functional throughout. I'm [therefore] a bit uncomfortable at what got published.
"Our view is this was blown totally out of proportion. This happened at half past three; we were fully restored by half past four. Did it have a major impact? Yes, of course we are totally embarrassed, we do apologise to our customers absolutely; but being in the IT industry, we know that things like this happen.
"Our systems are fine," he adds. "Obviously, we are nursing them because we had some challenges Monday night synchronising them all. We are monitoring them."
Fischer says the Internet banking facility was "a bit slow" on Tuesday, as "some connections were not working". He confirmed this morning that "all our monitors [are] green" and that the facility is fully functional.
However, several Standard Bank clients told ITWeb they were still experiencing problems. Fischer undertook to resolve the matter.
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